Ground-penetrating radar allows to identify early maturing potato cultivars

Ground-penetrating radar might help the potato industry save water, according to Dr. Dirk Hays, Texas A&M AgriLife Research?plant geneticist in the soil and crop sciences department at College Station. Hays? latest project utilizes ground-penetrating radar to select early maturing potato cultivars, which can help producers make harvest decisions and increase water-use efficiency. His project is in coordination with AgriLife Research and the department of horticultural sciences potato breeding program conducted by breeders Dr. Creighton Miller and Dr. Isabel Vales, both at College Station. Dirk Hays, Texas A&M AgriLife Research plant geneticist explains "We know radar will work on potatoes. Radar works on detecting objects that are denser than the soil environment they are in. Potatoes are very moist versus the sandy soils they are grown in, so it?s relatively easy to image the potatoes with the ground-penetrating radar.? He said under the current practices, the potato breeding program might start with 80,000 individual lines in early generation trials aimed at selecting high-yielding cultivars, and all lines are harvested at 120 days. Dirk Hays continues ?If you want to select for earliness, say a cultivar that is mature at 90 days or 110 days, you would have to replicate the planting of that cultivar multiple times to allow for multiple harvests. The vegetative nature of the plants and the need to dig up the potatoes doesn?t allow them to select for early maturity. But with ground penetrating radar, they can image the size of the tubers and get a correlation to the actual physical size of the potato without harvesting them. When we do that, we can get an almost one-to-one relationship between the digital image of the potato and the actual weight of the potato.? Hays said with ground radar, depth is dependent on radar frequency and soil type. Higher frequency ground-penetrating radar antennas have higher resolution for smaller objects, yet lose signal depth. Lower frequency radars have greater depth yet are better at detecting larger objects. ..// Complete articleEarly maturing potato cultivars can be identified using ground-penetrating radar, finds Texas A&M Agrilife SourcePotatopro